The Best Staking Website in Crypto: Interview With Killian of StakingRewards.Com

Transcript

welcome back to the rollup High Roller Community as always nothing on the rollup is to be ConEd as Financial advice we are just an Educators in the defi space toss us a quick like give us a share a repost send it to a friend who may want to watch this and finally give us a sub or a follow it means the world to help support credibly neutral educational content in def5 we're here to educate Empower and enrich you and let's jump in what's going on guys we're here at the staking Summit live today put on by staking rewards.com we've got our boy Killian with us uh we're back on the rollup Killian how you doing today it's been a good day yeah it's been a busy day uh day two of the stadium Summit so been a massive success so so

far so PL compl BL yeah one of the one of the really cool uh things that I've been learning about just going to dive straight into the weeds here is this idea of DVT and how we can basically lower the the amount of eth needed to participate in staking and I think this is this is something that's super super important what are your what are your thoughts about that yeah I think it's very much needed and and I think there's two elements to it like number one more people can take part in running their own note um at home and secondly it brings a community aspect to it right so um you can team up with a bunch of your mates or or just even people from all around the world and you can set up a DVT note together and then share the

keys amongst yourselves um and then the you know the good thing about it is is the network becomes more resilient it's got that Community aspect and more people can take part so um I think we haven't seen anything yet for it um I'm expecting there to be Market places for DBT staking where you can pair up with people you know um I know a lot of people like the dating sites but maybe the cryptos space this becomes the next big thing so yeah let's see yeah yeah I mean I think it it enables all all user types to join staking and you know we had we had touched on this with you guys having a a really broad kind of user base of users um you know and I think that this kind of allows that that uh

newer smaller crypto curious Bas to to kind of come about um I know we already touched on it previously but what what is the user base that you guys are seeing at staking rewards is it a lot of what one-sided institutional flows or has DVT allowed more kind of smaller uh and more crypto curious people come up out yeah of course so um at sawards we generally service three uh almost user bases so we have the protocols on one side we've got the staken providers that are running nodes on those protocols and then we've got the users on our website that are coming to our site to look for new yield opportunities um and to specifically look at you know what can I earn if I want to stake e dot Cosmos salana whatever you want um and so we

try and service those three verticals um in terms of how DBT has impacted that you know we worked quite a lot now with SSV and with obal um and so I think people are starting to get more interested in it through content through the tutorials I mean they're both sponsors here at the state of the summit so they're becoming more ingrained in the community and I think that's the strategy so as people start to learn about it the adoption grows um you know for example uh D.A protocol they have DBT uh um sort of implemented at the protocol level um and so they're also one of the new lsts on the market but what did is they had a a workshop today right and so the point of the workshop was to show how easy it is for you to

set up a DVT nerde right form part of a cluster and to start running a validator on ethereum um and so within the workshop I took part of the workshop and um took part in the workshop and within 30 minutes I'm currently now running a validated note on testnet for D.A protocol right so I think it shows you like I'm not necessarily a developer um but yet I can follow a set of instructions I can set up my note and I have a reasonable degree of confidence that I actually know what's going on whereas before things might have been a little bit you know scary um and I think people sometimes take that for granted right you want people to start looking into it and not to be discouraged and so

workshops like this where people get educated they they walk through the process um you know it's very reassuring and it's it's very exciting to to be able to say you're taking part um in decentralizing ethereum and helping the broader crypto space um by doing that yeah yeah no totally agree and those those workshops are very important for onboarding right it's like things like that are are kind of like why we are even in the education space it's this kind of like public good angle of like let's onboard people and try to make it easy for them now kind of getting more into the weeds because we love to just get deep into the dech and just understand how this works and what the tradeoffs are so DBT distributed validator technology it allows you to

have kind of a b you know one ether less than one e even in some cases I think clay stack has like a zero eth and they have different Bond Underwriters and things but effectively let's say a small amount of e to distribute into the the pool into these clusters yeah how what is the trade-off with these clusters like how do you manage decentralization at like the uh execution client the consensus client level like where does that really happen so that way that you know just because users are using small amounts it's not it's not going to centralize this this kind of force it's going to allow it to and still remain in this quote unquote decentralized fashion yeah yeah so I think the the key is if

we if we look at how we got to this point now um you know we started off with you need 32 to run validate and that's you still need that then rocket full came along now you can start a rocket full mini pool and um and so now you as a validator running a rord pool note would only need 608 now rord pool dat a further upgrade now you only need eight e uh then D.A prodal T along now you only need one e right so I'm expecting that to continue um in terms of the like specific risks and trade-offs with that um I'm sure you can find that in the documentation I don't know the exact details behind that but by way of example why this is important is for example with uh like Diva or rord

pool now um because of DBT you can split validated Keys up between different node operators so what does that look like let's say you and your mates you've got 16 different friends nice big friend group and you guys all you all want to run uh a no right so now you can take those validated keys and you can split them up between you and all your friends but now your friend lives in Asia the other one lives in the US the other one lives in South Africa like me me the other ones in Europe and the other ones in Alaska right now each of you are running your note now let's say for me in South Africa and this is a real world issue right in our country we actually don't have electricity 24 hours of the day right so we have rolling power outes

every single day between 4 to 8 hours okay now for me as I'm running my node at home that means I'm going to go live and go offline 4 to8 hours of the day unless I buy back a power supply but that's not always capit like let's say I can't afford that Len what am I going to do now in in the case where you need 32 my node would go offline and I would be getting slashed right and I don't want to get slashed right so DVT makes this possible because now while I am blind um assuming like depending on the structure but we can still reach consensus with let's say 66% of the other people that are in uh sort of in the cluster so that

means you as my mates can actually carry me while I'm offline and there's no effect to the performance and it also improves the redundancy and resiliency of the ethereum network because then even if two of us go offline but everyone else is still online everything's still fine right so I think like that's a a really interesting thing to think about because if you want to decentralize you have to geographically be centralized across the entire world um but when you get to third world countries like you know like in Africa where it's literally a reality you don't have electricity 24 hours of the day how do you get around that DBT steps in by lowering the bond but also increasing the resilien here and now suddenly

Things become a lot more interesting you know so now I don't even have to worry about bi electricity going off cuz I know that the other guys in the class they can carry me while I'm up yeah that makes sense yeah and you basically can take one node with of ethereum which is could be one home Staker for example or or one uh one one one batch that like Lio or rocket pool would put together with 32 or even eight or 16 and you could decentralize that entirely amongst 32 or 16 or eight people across across the world and if I'm if I'm not mistaken there's also other infrastructure providers here at the conference that also operate mostly within different regions of the world too right so as a as an entity like a um you know like like one of these uh staking providers

you can kind of pick and choose different infrastructure Prov ERS and and spread yourself out amongst like Obel SSV um course one or or others that are kind of located in different areas too right exactly so um you know some of them will run like bare metal uh infrastructure and they would be like physically located somewhere but then others would be using Cloud hosting Solutions which might have a regional like Regional servers and stuff in Europe or Asia or the US um but you know if you think about like if you get going down to weeds like those guys can still be shut down right so if the government's like hey you can't do this anymore or Amazon or Google or one of those bigger players that they might be

using says sorry we can't do this anymore then there's an issue right um so when gets to DBT and you get individual people actually running a note in their own house yeah um that is the the real ticker and the real important part people need to realize that this increases the decentralization drastically um because by by lowering the sort of Entry barrier to get in more people can get in um and and that's important because most people don't have 32 right so I think you want more individuals running nodes at home um because corporations that of course like are commercially providing staking Services I mean they're good and and

they they have an important part to play in the ecosystem but they do not necessarily contribute to true decentralization as as would thousands of individuals and even if those individuals are are still small amounts it's still just the the the the the network separation right where where like you say like what if something happened and these are all like hypotheticals but where one whole continent or one whole country went off the globe for in one hour right and if that had a a strong if that one uh area had a strong amount of uh or a strong percentage of different nodes that would be a problem right but if we could kind of separate that then that's really interesting and I think just kind of Switching gears as we kind of wrap up

this this chat I think that that um slashing is one thing that is that is really interesting uh and I was just talking to the guys from clay stack and that they brought up that ethereum is one of the only proof of stake networks that uh actually does not have uh deterministic slashing meaning you don't really know what your penalty is going to be if you get slashed on a theum whereas you know polygon or live Pier or bancer Etc there's a set there's a set penalty could you please explain to the audience like what slashing is how it happens why it happens how to avoid it and then we can kind of touch on like me and how different companies take advantage of it too yeah sure so um yeah slashing is basically an intrinsic part of every proof of State protocol so uh

to like dumb it down and make it as simple as possible uh to become a validator on a network you need to put something at stake hence the term staking now why do you have to put something at stake because if you act contrary to the rules of the network it must cost you right because you should be disincentivized to be doing dodgy stuff on the network so you put something at stake then that would incentivize you to act uh you know in a trustworthy way and align with the rules of the network um because why because you can lose what you've put at State and because it has monetary value you most likely will you know uh be incentivized economically to stay in

line with the rules of the network so that's what like the core of slashing is and so um in terms of like how users need to think about it in the staking world it's it's actually not as risky as people think um you know if anyone's like dived into def5 protocols and the different yield opportunities available there like that's far more risky than yields that you're generating from Slash from staking so um I think like sometimes people can think about Slash and be like oh my word I can lose my entire staking balance right theoretically you could on some networks but it's highly unlikely because if you choose a good staking provider you mitigate most of that risk right that's

why Stak rewards introduced the verified staking provider program because a lot of users were coming to us and be like hey guys who should we stay for right and because us um as a data aggregator we don't St we don't run any NES ourselves but we could objectively say hey you should stake with this guy or stake with this guy um and so we developed the vssp at this program to establish a standard for what are the best taking providers in the world doing what is their operational procedures what is the Benchmark right and so we you know second providers that want to become a part of that have to fly to join the program we do the verification and then they show up is verified on our platform which is a signal to stakers looking for trustworthy validators to

say hey we've vetted these guys if you trust taking rewards and our methodology which is obviously available then you can try St data so um you know if you if you want to know like how do I mitigate this risk of slashing from my perspective step one would be only consider verified staking providers and then step two would be a lot of these larger players actually have slashing Insurance okay okay so that would come from like Quan stamp um and chain proof they they have that type of offering or Nexus Mutual there's a bunch of different Insurance offerings um and so if you do see that they have that available then you should be okay because even in the unlikely event of some slashing event happening they would have

insurance for that and often times these guys would even plug the hole if if there was money lost they would from their own cash reserves pay for that why if because their reputation is worth more than let's say a million dollars that that they lose for whatever reason because if they have a reputation as a validator as being slashed that's like the number one thing you do not yeah you don't want to be a part of that validator exctly so you know I would I would like to like encourage people to think about slashing differently like it is the number one thing these guys are trying to avoid and if they have a half decent operation they will avoid it so um people shouldn't worry about it too much and sort of the whole system is

designed to incentivize these guys to have the best possible setup to not get slashed because it would cost them number one economically but two reputationally so um yeah I personally don't see it as a massive thing um especially if uh you know if these guys have done their due diligence through the they a vssp right yeah yeah and I'm glad to hear about that because I I you know I I for one had no no idea that that exists and I've heard VSP multiple times today and been thinking about how that's defined but you know it seems like a lot of these protocols come through you guys and then through through your site you can see a lot of this activity right you know we we we went through the the you know the

different staking calculators and and the different kind of aspects to to your site which allow people to really understand what they're going to get the risks and and the upsides and I think like that like the last thing here is there's like there's me in staking right so there are different validators that that capture me specifically in ethereum as well as other networks and then they actually earn their they actually earn their uh stakers more yield and that and other validators earn less right so H you know how do you think about that and like is there is there um like are there consistently validators or companies in a non-biased way that are outperforming others because of M or

because of better strategies yeah yeah so I think um yeah it's quite a complex topic but um some validators opt in to M so they try and captur it for uh people that have stayed with him yes um but it's it's not it's not that straightforward for them to do from a regulatory standpoint okay um and also some clients just don't want it because it can be a great area so yeah it's got a negative tone almost yeah almost a negative tone because it can people some people see it as a negative externality like sort of taking and uh what's the word like you know cuz it comes from front running and different things like that um but it can almost come across as

like you're stealing from an unsuspecting user right and then it's coming to you and again I I personally don't see an issue with it but other people might um so I think from our perspective we see some validators capturing it others are not others are thinking about it from the ethical standpoint others are looking at it from the regulatory standpoint so you don't see it like across the board that all of them are capturing it um but definitely some of the larger players like um GL Ro I mean like graet pool has something called the smoothing pool so it's essentially you can take part in this pool with a bunch of other node operators um and any me blocks that are earned um or you know that are sort of

processed by those validators uh goes on this pool and because there's obviously a lot more of you the likelihood of receiving these these M blocks increases and but because it's the pool it gets shared with everyone in the pool so um that's actually an opin thing that retp has and so it it varies from like uh uh from like sort of St provider to St provid it but um it's definitely something that's growing it's an important part of the space um and it's it's something that's interesting to keep an eye on yeah so some validators offer it and some don't and then as a user within the ones which do you you you sometimes have a choice whether or not like in in rocket pool's case you have a choice but perhaps in others it

might just be like the like like the standard exactly exactly so um I think we'll see more of that where the user base has the choice to opt in yeah yeah uh versus to not opt in um and and what do you think do you think users will see the higher yield and be like yeah what the hell or do you I like commercial retail users I mean I would be like you know give me this give me more yield it comes down of the same thing like do users really care at this current point about decentralization about trust lense about these St things and like you want to say yes that's why we're that's why we're building here but ultimately like I think yeah they see higher number and it's like yeah exactly I think it's a spum right so you'll see even at this

conference there's there's a spectrum and depending on where you're on the Spectrum you'll be more aligned with this or more aligned with that so um I think from a commercial standpoint a lot of these companies will try and cater to everyone on the Spectrum yeah or will only focus on one end of the spect so for example like a tant which is a massive institutional stateum provider um was chat into the earlier today and they just focus on their FA they just that's that's their bread and butter uh not really looking to EXP to new chains um and it works for them right so they don't they're not trying to cater to retail they're not trying to cater to anyone else on the Spectrum they're just SP focusing on that and it works right

but then there's another another sort of aspect where the difference sa Rider might be just focused on retail and and that's totally okay and video of it right it's it's an ecosystem every part and every company has their part to play um in making it a healthy ecosystem so yeah yeah it's it's certainly exciting and and different Parks make up the puzzle right so um I appreciate your time today kilan it's been a pleasure cool thanks so much cheers God and uh thank you bye cheers cool